Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson’s Bottom reunion series Hooligan’s Island has been scrapped, RadioTimes.com can reveal. A BBC spokesperson confirmed that the comedy project, which was announced in August, will no longer be going ahead, but declined to comment further.

Adrian Edmondson gave an interview on Ollie Winberg’s BBC Radio Essex programme over the weekend, during which he was asked about the progress of the series and said: “There isn’t a Bottom series four. There isn’t anything.

“We started working on something and we realised why we stopped working together. It wasn’t working.”

Elaborating on why he chose to back out of the project, Edmondson explained: “Because I enjoy other things more.

“I’m aware that people think comedy’s easy to do and write and everything, and it relatively is to be honest. But once you get to a certain age you want to do things you really enjoy, not just things you can do.”

The show would have seen Bottom characters Richard Richard and Eddie Hitler transplanted from their Hammersmith flat to a deserted tropical island, an idea first explored in Rik and Ade’s 1997 Bottom live show, which was also called Hooligan’s Island.

If you have never watched Bottom in all it’s sordid glory, you should be hung drawn and quartered, whilst Richie is boring you to death and Eddie is drinking your bleach.

Forget any other comedies you have ever seen, if you have never laughed at The Dangerous brothers, The Young Ones, The Comic Strip and Filthy Rich and Catflap, you should be shot. If you have never watched Bottom in all it’s sordid glory, you should be hung drawn and quartered, whilst Richie is boring you to death and Eddie is drinking your bleach.

Richard Richard and Eddie Elizabeth Hitler, (Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson respectively) are returning to our screens, the human Tom and Jerry are currently writing a new series based on their ‘Hooligans Island’ live show. The impact Bottom had on my generation cannot be described, there isn’t a day that goes by, that a quote doesn’t pass my lips, and that of many of my friends all round the world. It’s like a secret club, if you don’t get it, fuck off. Forget that book about Jesus and stuff, this was the bible, anytime I’m pissed off I just visualise scenes from any episode and start laughing. It’s also a good way for people to think you are mental. Of course there is the box set (the complete series) the film, Hotel Paradiso, and the Live DVD’s.

Me and my mates had the pleasure of seeing the Bottom one live show, at the Winter Gardens, Margate, and the excitement was at a gram of speed, half bottle of vodka seeing your comedy gods kind of level. Nothing else at that moment mattered. You could have told our group that prohibition had just been introduced five minutes ago and simultaneously all our girlfriends were currently taking it up right up the gary by a bunch of crack crazed vicars, and we would have ignored it. There they were, up on stage, and we were in the front row. My proudest moment: as he did in every show, (and still was when I saw them in Blackpool four years later on Hooligans Island) Richie did his, ‘What shall I do now?’ skit, I screamed the known answer ‘HAVE A WANK’ and he started laughing, and started chanting it. Afterwards the local Kebab shop near my flat had two visitors, I went in apparently five minutes after they had gone. The owner, who knew me vaguely, saw my Bottom t-shirt, and told me they’d just been in. SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

So, for my top greatest Bottom moments. There really are too many too choose from, but here goes, brace yourselves:

Series 1, Episode 2 – “Gas”

This is one of the funniest, the Gas man comes to read the meter, which they have rigged up to Mr Rottweiller’s gas supply next door, and they have to stop him leaving. Total Tom and Jerry moment, kicking the shit out of the Gasman, the sound effects whilst Richie is punching away and Eddie smacking him with a frying pan, brings grown men to tears. ‘You’re not going anywhere mate! Mate? Mate! Eddie! You’ve killed him!’

Eddie: ‘I never touched him.

Richie: ‘Yeah, but the frying pan did, didn’t it, and you were touching that at the time!’

Eddie: ’Bollocks, you killed him. He was dead before he hit the ground.’

Richie: ‘Well then why did you keep hitting him with the frying pan?’

Eddie: For fun?’

Richie: ‘Oh God! What are we going to do?’

Eddie: ‘About twenty-five years I think.’

Series 1, Episode 5 – “s Up”

When Richie and Eddie take over their landlords shop for a day, the power goes to Richie’s head. ‘Tuna, good’ appraising the stock, then an old woman asking him

‘Ere what’s the matter, are you mad?

‘Do you want some of this? Do you? ‘Cause you’re gonna get it, you old git! You’re gonna get a right load of this right up your bracket! Right load of this, right in your face!’

Series 2, Episode 1 – “Digger”

But oh….Richie posing as a duke, and meeting Lady Natasha Letitia Sarah Jane Wellesley Obstromsky Ponsonsky Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Smythe Oblomov Boblomov Dob, 3rd Viscountess of Moldavia. She wants his fortune, and is ready for sex, when she knocks on his door after he has been studying the joy of sex, and has to change his pajama bottoms, he then opens the door terrified and comes out with ‘Hah, der guu saingn saga snurghesa sagahm shergo schnsaga shhahaagn… I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten how to talk. Huh, come in, come in.’

Series 2, Episode 4 – “Parade”

The funniest episode they did in my reckoning, Chatting up the new barmaid, Julia Sawalha, and fighting with Kryton from Red Dwarf, playing a Falklands veteran, who doesn’t believe Richie’s story, Eddie joins in, Eddie: So, ah, what did you do then?

Going on holiday, when Richie tries his g-string swimming trunks on, and loses them up his arse, Eddie fetches his tool kit with rather painful results, burning them off with a blowtorch, Richie’s face will make you piss yourself.

“Break” again

Exercise time: Richie needs to lose 3 stone before the holiday, after getting a blowjob from the hoover, plan B is put into action. He gets on their homemade treadmill, running like a girl, Eddie increasing the speed, then slams on the brakes, Richie goes flying through the window.

Series 3, Episode 4 – “Dough”

Eddie holed up in his bedroom, and Ritchie is lonely, knocking on his door. The door opens and Eddie reaches out holding a lit blow torch and sets fire to Richie’s balls, Richie screams and falls backwards, falling arse-over-tit down the stairs, crashing through the bathroom door and coming to rest next to the toilet, still on fire, and legs it to their fishbowl, ‘Oh Blimey! I’d better put the blaze out quickly, it’ll go on for days I’m so well hung‘ then frantically shags the fishbowl to put out the fire,

Eddie comes down ; ‘I see you’ve found something to help you pass the time, then.’

Series 3, Episode 6 – ”Carnival”

‘There’s plenty of room in my trousers, sadly’

Richie; ‘I am going to make my very own prime time current affairs discussion programme!

The plan is to send a video to a Jeremy Beadle style program, Eddie chooses Kilroy as the sexiest man on TV and Richie will do the acting, walking down the stairs introducing the programme;

Eddie: Action!

Richie: ‘Hello, and good morning. Should Traffic wardens be armed? In the stu…’

He steps forward and then comes falling down the stairs and smashes through the bathroom door. Eddie follows around the door with the camcorder. Richie is upside down in the toilet, his head lodged firmly in the bowl.

Wimbledon Common, the camping trip they have to go on from a bet with mad Ken Stalin, and Richie’s forgot the food, Eddie wants a womble, but settles for the packet of chocolate Hobnobs he’s brought, Richie wants some, cue one of their more spectacular fights, Richie losing out, tent peg through the eye, swallowing a dart, and getting it back, on the back of his head.

In conclusion, yeah it’s infantile, but so fucking what, if you can’t have a laugh, then go and watch Ben Elton. Many people are more like Eddie and Richie than they would ever admit, c’mon, life should not be taken too seriously, what’s the point? and in the immortal words of Eddie Hitler;

Next year it will be 18 years since Richard Richard “Richie Richard” Richard and Eddie Hitler last graced our television screens.

Long enough for a generation to be born, learn to walk and talk, grow up, go to school, nearly learn to read, leave school and register for job seekers’ allowance all without having experienced the wit and wisdom of two of comedy’s greatest characters.

All that is about to change as we find out what happened to two titans of comedy, Richie and Eddie. Are they still wandering round and round Hammersmith roundabout looking for a safe place to cross? Are they still living in one of the dirtiest and least hygienic flats uncondemned by Health and Safety? Are they still drinking neat furniture polish whilst hitting each other over the head with large metal objects, setting fire to each other’s private parts and other areas as they seek to impress gullible members of the opposite sex, and each other? Or are they down the pub?

No, they are abandoned, lost and shipwrecked on a tropical hell hole that is Hooligans’ Island, although they are still hitting each other over the head with large metal objects, still chasing women, (even though there are none on the island) and still waiting for that job seekers’ allowance cheque as they distil something quite like alcohol, only worse.

And they are back on BBC Two in 2013 for six new 30-minute episodes starring Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. Be afraid. Be very afraid. And a bit bilious.

Rik Mayall says: “How much am I getting paid? Are there any birds in it? And that horrific arse-brained Edmondson’s not in it again is he? Oh, God help me… no, no, alright then, I’ll do it. That useless, foul smelling waste of space and oxygen is really going to get it this time. This is the big one. Tell the audience to brace themselves.”

Ade Edmondson said: “It’s been a while since I last worked with that complete b****** Rik Mayall and I’m very much looking forward to bashing him about the head with various blunt objects. It’s the only language he understands.”

Commissioned by Janice Hadlow, Controller, BBC Two and Mark Freeland, Head of BBC In-House Comedy, Hooligans’ Island will be a BBC Comedy co-production with Phil McIntyre Television. It will be executive produced by Mark Freeland and produced by Jon Plowman.

New series was announced at the Edinburgh International Television Festival

The boys from Bottom are back in a new show which sees Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson revive their cult characters Richie Rich and Eddie Hitler.

The pair have swapped their filthy flat for the sandy shores of a tropical island in the six-part series.

Edmondson said: “It’s been a while since I last worked with that complete b****** Rik Mayall and I’m very much looking forward to bashing him about the head with various blunt objects. It’s the only language he understands.”

The show, called Hooligans Island, will be on BBC2 next year.

The last series of Bottom aired in 1995. In 2008 it was voted 45th in a ‘Britain’s Best Sitcom’ BBC poll.

It is one of a series of new comedy commissions announced at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

It has been nearly two decades since Richie Rich and Eddie Hitler last graced our television screens in cult hit, Bottom.

Now 18 years on BBC2 is reuniting Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson for a new series of Bottom.

For viewers wondering what ever happened to the loutish characters the new six-part series will show how their lives turned out.

It seems Eddie and Richie – now in their forties – have been shipwrecked on a tropical hell hole dubbed ‘Hooligans Island’.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘They are still hitting each other over the head with large metal objects, still chasing women, even though there are none on the island, and still waiting for that job seekers allowance cheque as they distil something quite like alcohol, only worse.’

Bottom was a cult hit for BBC2 in the 1990s and was famed for its nihilistic humour and violent slapstick.

The pair lived on government benefits in a grotty Hammersmith bedsit and spent their time attacking each other or consuming toxic substances.

Joy of joys! Bottom, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson’s riot of slapstick, toilet humour and existentialism is to be revived on BBC2.

However the show’s new series won’t be taking place in Richie and Eddie’s grotty Hammersmith flat. It’ll be set instead on the tropical island which played host to messrs Rich and Hitler in the 1997 Bottom stage show, Hooligan’s Island.

The format for the new series, which is to be called Hooligan’s Island rather than Bottom, will be little-altered though, as the Beeb promises that the pair will still be clobbering one another with large metal objects and chasing women in spite of the island being deserted.

Demonstrating a rapport that remains unchanged since their early Comedy Store days as The Dangerous Brothers, Rik and Ade both greeted the announcement of their reunion with characteristic aplomb.

Rik said: “How much am I getting paid? Are there any birds in it? And that horrific arse-brained Edmondson’s not in it again is he? Oh, God help me… no, no, alright then, I’ll do it.

“That useless, foul smelling waste of space and oxygen is really going to get it this time. This is the big one. Tell the audience to brace themselves.”

His co-star echoed Mayall’s sentiments, in a way, saying: “It’s been a while since I last worked with that complete b****** Rik Mayall and I’m very much looking forward to bashing him about the head with various blunt objects. It’s the only language he understands.”

It’s been 18 years since Bottom was last on air but finally, after almost two decades away, Richie and Eddie will make their TV comeback in 2013. As the Corporation says: “Be afraid. Be very afraid. And a bit bilious.”